


Armatura

by etal



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etal/pseuds/etal
Summary: “It’s like…” he mumbles out, eventually, “I can cope with a lot of stuff, I do, all the time... the whole world looking at my naked ass, and rejections at auditions and feeling like I’m never really good enough and all that actor-insecurity shit, butthis…I’d forgotten what it’s like to meet people who really fuckinghateyou.”





	Armatura

**Author's Note:**

> sprinkling of smut only, shouldn't promise then not put out.  
> & fluff is insufficiently comforting  
> but yes to angst.

Armie gets into Heathrow in the early hours of a misty September morning and he’s relieved that his arrival seems to have gone unnoticed. Obviously, it’s a whole fucking complicated mess at home and it was crazy of him to come, but Nicole had let him know that Tim had a day or two break from filming and was planning on holing up in his hotel so he reckons if he just books a room in the same place, shows up all incognito, then they can either hang out, or not. Reckless, right? He checks in as dawn breaks, with a wink and a fistful of notes to the desk clerk, under the name ‘Oliver Hammington’ just for the pleasure of being a dick about it. He sleeps all day Saturday and walks in Green Park on Sunday, keeping his baseball cap tipped down, appreciating the way Brits will go to great lengths to avoid looking a stranger in the eye. When it rains, he shelters in the Portrait Gallery, rather than the hellishly crowded National next door, and drifts from room to room in the opposite direction to the one politely suggested by the arrows in the gallery plan: famous faces in their pomp, doughy prime ministers, Shakespeare (maybe), forgotten royals looking down their noses at him, and all the celebrity victims who’d been famoused to death: Lennon, Diana, Wilde. 

He naps away the rest of the afternoon. He hasn’t had a message from Tim in a few days, which isn’t unusual given his insane shooting schedule, but when he wakes up there’s a message from Nicole:

_He’s heading back to London this afternoon, eta 6pm. He has no idea you’ll be there, he’ll be so pleased!! xx_

He settles into a corner of the bar at the back of the lobby to wait, wishing people still read newspapers because they were much better for hiding behind than phones. There’s a throng of photographers out on the pavement and a little gang of girls, and Armie keeps his good old cap on and down, even though he knows they can’t see in. He orders up an aperol spritz, for the taste of Rome, and drowses, thinks about what he might say to Tim when he arrives, how he’ll surprise him. It’s been a few months. He still doesn’t know what’s going on with them, really. They’ve established a kind of shorthand version of a proper relationship: meet, talk like they just left off the conversation five minutes ago, laugh like he can’t with anyone else, fuck like it’s never felt with anyone else, then leave and let the other lives they have absorb them. He can’t ever let himself think beyond the day or two they scramble together, so he doesn’t try to now, just lets his mind roam around all the things that could happen over two unscheduled days, in a hotel room, with Timothée Chalamet.

There’s a quick stir of attention across the hushed lobby and as the doors open, Armie hears the gathered paparazzi shouting out. 

“Ay! ay! Timmy, over here…”  
“What’s bin keepin’ you?” in a wretched imitation of camp…  
“…anything to say to the haters Timothy?”

They’re spilling into the hotel lobby like a brawling, snapping monster with a hundred arms and open jaws, there’s a mess of bodies, someone on the floor, the flashes feel like bullets. Armie can’t get a sight of him through the chaos. On the other side of the windows, girls are flattening themselves against the one-way glass, beating with their fists, and he can hear their screams and a kind of sustained, pained moan, along with their chanting of Timothée’s name. At least the fans say it right, not like the paps. They’re calling him other stuff.

“not looking that hot today eh, give us a smile...”  
“Oi over here bitch…”

Armie’s on his feet, but he’s been well-trained enough over the last ten years not to give in to the instinct to smash his fist into the nearest leering, mocking face, snatch the cameras and tear them to pieces with his bare hands. How many times has he closed his eyes in the safety of a private departure lounge, in the sudden quiet of a restaurant, on the other side of his own fucking front door, still maintaining an expression as carefully calm as a cloudless sky, and imagined doing proper lasting violence to those loathsome fuckers: knocking their teeth out, knee to the stomach, punching them to the ground and carrying on punching them into limpness…

But the familiar impulse fades away when Timothée comes into full view. He’s got his collar up, huge headphones over his ears, and sunglasses on, incongruous on this overcast London afternoon. Hunched and hunted, there’s distress in every corner of him as struggles out of the crowd, some ineffectual guy trying to hold them back from him. He hurtles across the lobby and the doorman and receptionist move in to herd the paps back to the gutter. Armie takes advantage of the scuffles at the doors to slip unseen past the desk, following Tim to the elevators and he manages to reach him just in time to step in behind him as the doors close. Tim whirls round like he’s expecting someone to attack him, and Armie steps back rather than towards him, palms up. He swallows the gasp that he wants to take at the sight of Tim, close-up, as he drags off his sunglasses and gapes at him.

It’s like all the light has gone out of him. He looks tired, sure, but Armie has seen Timmy _tired_ before; he’s seen him swaying, almost asleep on his feet after a night shoot, but still bubbling with pleasure, moonlight on his hair; he’s seen him wake up _laughing_ after long flights, hilarious at the ridiculousness of the relentless publicity circuit; seen him gamely dragging up the right answers to interviewers' questions when they were both so hungover that constructing a sentence felt like building a wall. This isn’t tired, this is _drained_. And more than that. His look in the seconds before he properly registers that it’s Armie in front of him is almost one of terror.

“Oh jesus Armie, thank god,” is all he says, and leans, more or less collapses, into Armie’s chest. 

Armie gets hold of his keycard, finds the right floor, the right door, all the time praying that no-one is going to appear and ask why he’s dragging this kid around the hotel.

Once they’re inside, Armie hustles Tim over to the bed, gets his boots off and then settles quietly next to him, watching him get control of himself again as he lies still, arm slung over his eyes. 

“What’s going on T., huh? Looks like you’re getting a little attention or something?”

Tim sighs and dropping his arms, turns to face him. Armie is shocked again by how desolate he looks.

“It’s like…” he mumbles out, eventually, “I can cope with a lot of stuff, I do, all the time... the whole world looking at my naked ass, and rejections at auditions and feeling like I’m never really good enough and all that actor-insecurity shit, but _this_ …I’d forgotten what it’s like to meet people who really fucking _hate_ you.”

“I did introduce you to my Mom, right?”

Tim’s not ready to laugh yet, he’s still hollowed-out and teary as he whispers, “god Armie, and I have to go back out there. You know?”

Armie knows. It’s the straight-up meanness that knocks the breath out of you, even after all this time, sends you reeling back to a childish place where anyone can hurt you and they’ll laugh at you if they see you cry. Take the art that you turn yourself inside out to make and rip it to pieces in front of you; give you prizes, then mock what you wear when you turn up to accept them; print outright lies to trash your reputation a hundred times before lunch but come for you, full of righteous indignation, if _you’re_ ever caught out in the mildest misdemeanour.

When they were all together with Luca and some hateful thing would show up on twitter or a professor somewhere would write an article about how their film wasn’t sufficiently attentive to queer experience or something they could just laugh it off or argue it through. And, truth is, pretty much every face Timothée has turned to in the last six months has been full of admiration and joy – worship, even.

He says something along those lines, about how it’s hard to readjust, how everyone has Monday mornings, even if film people don’t have them in the same ways as regular people. Tim’s still lost, back on his feet, shuddering around the room, wrapping his arms around himself and hovering by the window, staying behind the curtain, coming back to drill his head into Armie’s chest.

So Armie does what he can to put him back together. He orders room service and makes Tim eat; runs a bath and pours the wine. He sits on the side of the tub and rubs Tim’s feet, kisses his toes, talks about this and that, not getting into anything too much. Little by little he can feel Tim coming back into himself and he almost sounds normal when he says, “Truly, man, I feel like it’s going to kill me. There was this thing, last week, did you hear, with a fan?”

Armie had seen bits and pieces of stuff online but it had seemed to him like the usual bullshit and he had enough crap of his own bilging up his timeline. He shakes his head and strokes circles into Tim’s ankle and the sole of his foot.

“I just.. I’d been outside for like a half hour and it was icy fucking cold, and I’d been going since 5am, and I didn’t get time for lunch. But I was doing photos and autographs and whatever for the longest time and in the end I had to go, I mean I was already late... anyway, there was this girl I said no to, she kept wanting more photos and so she did this, like, crying vlog about how mean I was and all these other people weighed in and said I’d changed and I didn’t care anymore and…”

“Fuck ‘em, seriously Tim. You _cannot_ make yourself responsible when people behave like this. You could give them everything you’ve got and it’ll never be enough.”

“And there’s all these rumours, I don’t even know where they’re coming from, about me hooking up with some guy in .. and the pap guys have started yelling about it. God if nothing else it’s so _embarrassing_ and they’re vicious over here, the things they say to me…”

“I heard. They’re trying to get a reaction.”

“I know, I know and I can block it out but it’s like it gets through anyway...like they worm right in me, ugh…’ 

Armie knows it, he knows every inch of this feeling; what it feels like being doorstepped by grinning hacks the morning after the opening weekend numbers herald failure or when you’re on your phone at 3.49am reading down every fucked up comment under a years-old youtube clip. You feel _flayed_ , every bit of camouflage ripped away from you for all the world to see. It was why Luca’s film had been such a risk for him, it was just lucky that most people couldn’t see, even in that most truthful of films, what it was he was showing them. 

It was bad enough when he’d first started but since then they’d given everyone in the world a phone and full permission to record his every move. If you were famous, _Black Mirror_ was essentially a documentary. But he knows how to survive it.

“Ok look, up you come.” He gets Tim up out of the tub and wraps him in a towel. With a push and a pull, he wraps him up, dries him and kisses him, like he’s bringing him back from deep freeze. Then he strips his own clothes off so they're naked together, takes him by the hand and leads him back into the bedroom and stands him in front of the long mirror. Armie’s height and breadth mean he frames Timothée all round; Tim holds his arms out, just lifted from his sides, palms towards the glass, and Armie shadows him, enjoys the feeling of being all around him, Tim’s back pressed into Armie’s chest, his neck tipped back a little onto Armie’s shoulder. Armie drops a kiss onto the top of his head.

“You have to build another skin, T., put a whole other person between you and the world.” He puts his hand over Tim’s chest, where his heart is, then runs his palms over Tim’s shoulders and down his chest in long strokes, like he’s painting him. “You’ve got to put your armour on now. Don’t leave yourself vulnerable anymore.”

Tim shivers and Armie thinks it’s because of the touches, not the sadness; he’s leaning himself back into Armie, eyes fixed on their reflection.

“But, I need to be, to act, I need to stay… you always said what you liked about me was how I was so open.”

Armie gathers the damp heaps of curls, holds them up off the back of Tim’s neck and kisses his nape, his hairline, behind his ears, down his neck, until Tim sighs and curls an arm back over to hold onto Armie’s chin behind him. That’s a good sign: when Tim’s happy he has this thing about getting hold of weird bits of Armie - under his knee, biting into the flesh of his palm, pinching his earlobe, when he can get away with it.

Armie says, into his shoulder, “In Crema, after, I was just in awe of how out there and free you were and I didn’t want that to change. I didn’t want to be all _words of warning_ because I thought maybe it would be different for you… maybe they’d see what I saw and they’d leave you alone but…”

“They saw right through me.”

“Aw shit, Timmy, no _no_. Look, it’s this fucked up world. They can’t see anything beautiful without wanting to ruin it.”

Which is not the right thing to say because Tim drops his gaze and says, rueful, “Ruined? Already?”

“Nope, no. Just.. be ready, OK?” Armie holds onto Tim’s shoulders and gives him a little shake. “Armour.” He flows his hands down Tim’s arms, back up his chest, hugs him in close. “All over. Fuck ‘em. You know who you are and what you’ve got. You’ve just got to be ready for it. Stand square, but keep your armour on.”

He spools round to face Tim, smoothes his palms across his cheeks and really kisses him, in that way they can, the way they found first for the camera and then just for themselves.

Tim turns his head, kisses Armie’s wrist, takes the skin of Armie’s forearm gently between his teeth, then rubs his cheek back against Armie’s hand, asking for the touch of knuckles against his cheekbone. He says, “Armour?”

“All the way down,” Armie replies, and gets on his knees.

**  
At some point in the night, Tim raises his head from where he’s licking Armie’s nipples with these little crazy-making kitten licks he’s been doing for about five minutes and says, “Uh. what the fuck are you doing here, by the way? I forgot to ask.”

“I’m just here.”

“OK.” And he rolls off from the bed he’s made of Armie’s body and nudges back tight against his side, putting his face into Armie’s armpit. “You should probably do me now. I’m pretty sleepy.”

**  
They don’t try any clever stuff to leave the hotel, even when the girls and the cameras disappear. Timothée takes a couple of calls, tells people he’s getting some rest, wants to be quiet for a day or two. Wrapped up together in the early evening, watching the sun set red and glowing over the London rooftops from the bed, Tim says out of nowhere, “Anyway you can talk about not letting it get to you, jeez, you’re the one who likes to start the day picking fights with any random troll who pisses you off.”

“That’s just sport man, taking potshots from my swing-seat on the porch. Swatting mosquitoes.”

Tim sits up, a little imperious, a touch of kingly arrogance in the way he gathers his hair to tie it up, and lifts his chin to look down at Armie.

“You’ve got too much time on your hands. And you like the attention.”

Which means Armie has to roll him over and tie his hands up with the curtain cord, which is unsatisfactory, but will have to do in the circs., and show him what fucking _attention_ means.

**

Tim has an early call the next morning. Armie wakes with him and snags the breakfast tray from outside the door. They’ve been carefully low profile, Armie sneaking back to his room to mess it up a little, lurking in the bathroom when room service comes. Plausible deniability.

When the time comes to say goodbye they do their usual thing of not saying it. It’s a good system. Armie gets him ready to go out instead, sits by him while he cleans his teeth, not talking much. He buttons Tim’s shirt, gets his coat on him, arranges his headphones around his neck, tucks his sunglasses into his pocket. 

He nods at him when he’s all ready.

“Armour,” says Tim.

“yep.” Pulling him in and holding him, lips to lips, “but it’s just the outside, right. They can’t get at what’s in there,” he touches his fingertips to Tim’s temples, then to his heart, “or here. But you choose who you open it to, it’s not for everyone.”

“It’s all yours anyway.” Tim says it casually, as easily as if he were handing him a beer or the best part of a joint.

And then he’s gone. Armie watches from the window as he makes it from the door to a waiting car. The paps are back but someone from Plan B has got their shit together and there are two guys in careful attendance now to get him safely through the pack.

Armie slips back to his own room, gathers his stuff and rings reception to order a car back to Heathrow. He’ll switch on his phone when he lands, there’ll be a world of trouble, and he deserves everything that’s coming to him, for sure. He armoured himself years ago, so he chooses who hurts him and how. He’s never going to let Tim notice that every not-said goodbye is an arrow he welcomes, a knife in the gut which he opens his arms to receive, every time. 

Fine: on your feet _soldier_ , patch it up, keep moving.


End file.
